A place where I'll post up some thoughts and ideas - especially on literature in education, children's literature in general, poetry, reading, writing, teaching and thoughts on current affairs.

Wednesday, 5 March 2014

Further news on how Academies are carving up publicly owned schools

Here is another post on the thread following my 'Dear Mr Gove' letter this month. Please read previous blog and put the two together to see what's happening to the schools and land we used to own and have spent a hundred years maintaining...

" I know, first hand, of a conversation involving an executive from one of the larger academy chains. In it, he boasted that it was easy to find the money for "our cut". All you need to do, he said, is to identify the "fringe subjects" with fewer students, "get rid of 6 or 7 teachers", and you've "freed up the money" for the parasites. He didn't use the word parasites. That's mine.

So there, in a nutshell, you have the business model for the private academy chains : reduce choice and quality of education for students, sack teachers, and cream off taxpayer cash allocated to our children into your own pocket via inflated executive salaries and forcing schools to spend money on "services" provided by your other companies.

This is theft. It's corruption on a huge scale. It is being done openly, with the assent and encouragement of this Government. And nobody cares. Instead, our passive, privately-educated, media simply prints endless garbage about "failing" state schools and "weak" teachers, and academies offering "freedom from LEA control".

Under Gove, this has never been about standards. It's never been about school autonomy. It's about theft. Oh for an independent prosecutor on the Italian or American model, who could dig into this and put these thieving liars in jail where they belong. "